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Official Lost Podcast transcript/April 10, 2007
Graft is responsible for this transcription. It is one in the series of the Official Lost Podcasts. ---- Michael Giacchino: Hello everybody, I'm Michael Giacchino. I write the music for Lost, and I just wanted to welcome you to the Official Lost Video Podcast. [Lost Video Podcast title card with Lost theme music] Kris White: Hello, and welcome back to the Official Lost Video Podcast hosted by abc.com. I'm your host Kris, and today we're gonna be going behind the scenes with Michael Giacchino for a tour of the scoring stage. We did this a couple of seasons ago, back when we were only doing audio podcasts, but now that we're doing video podcasts, we figured it'd be great to go back behind the scenes and actually see a Flapamba, as well as hear it. Giacchino in a sit-down interview Michael Giacchino: When I started working in T.V., my fear was that I wasn't gonna be able to work with live orchestra, because when I started on Alias, there was no show, essentially, that was using a live orchestra because it's expensive and over the years synthesizers have come to replace, you know, live musicians. Which is very sad. So when I met J.J. one of our first conversations was... you know, I felt like we had to do it with a live orchestra. I didn't want kind of a standard orchestra for this show. I just wanted wanted something that was not typical for what you would get on a show about characters stranded on an island. So... the orchestra I put together was, you know, trombones... four trombones, a string section, a crazy percussion... crazy stuff back there, a harp player, and a piano player. the scoring stage Michael Giacchino: This is Mark. as Mark Gasbarro is startled Mark is a great, great piano player, and I'm lucky to have him on everything I do. Can you give us a little example of what the show sounds like, piano-wise? Mark Gasbarro: I mean, so far this week what I'm seeing is... Gasbarro plays a tense, dissonant passage from "Exposé" Michael Giacchino: Very, very romantic, beautiful stuff, ya know. That's a love scene between Kate and Sawyer. Mark Gasbarro: Elegant noise, yes. an isolation booth Michael Giacchino: Here we have a player that could play any beautiful thing in the world on the harp, and what do I ask them to do? I go, say, "Okay, grab the low C and hit it with your nail 14 times. At a tempo of 60 bpm." Right? Amy Schulman: And I'm glad to do it. laughing Michael Giacchino: They 'say' that, but come on, they'd much rather be... I'm sure. I always feel so bad when I write that note, and I'm like "uugh." Amy Schulman: We are glad to do it. Michael Giacchino: What does that sound like? Can you grab that? Schulman plays low notes on the harp, slowly Michael Giacchino: There you go, ya know? And this giant thing is needed to do that, but it's such a great sound, ya know? It carries scenes, whole scenes, it'll carry a whole scene sometimes, just that thing over and over. to sit-down interview Michael Giacchino: When I worked on Alias with J.J., you know, I'd get a tape and I would watch the entire episode, and I'd be like "Oh, okay, I get the episode, and I get what the story is," and I'd start working on it. But with Lost, I remember after seeing the very first episode I thought, "No, this has got to be done differently." And what I wanted to try and do was... what I'll do is... when I sit down to write an episode, I'll watch it only a scene at a time. I don't watch the whole thing. So, I'll start at the beginning, I'll get to a point where there needs music, and I'll write that cue. I remember in the beginning they were like, "Should we send you scripts?" Because on Alias I would get scripts every week. New ones would come every week, and they'd pile up in the house. On Lost I say, "I don't want anything. Nothing." Cause I don't want to know. I mean, for me, I just wanted to kinda do the best job I could for the audience, and hopefully make them feel as on the edge of their seat as they need to be with the show. You know, I don't know if that works or not, I have no clue. But for me it's kinda fun, and it's a different way of approaching the job that I do, which is normally done very, you know, kind of "Well, watch the whole show, put music here, here, and here," you know. Where this is... it feels a little bit more creative to me. to the scoring stage Karl Vincent: My name is Karl Vincent and I'm a low frequency modulator, or bass player if you will. laughing Um, Mr. Giacchino happens to be an expert in peristaltic apparitions, indispensable in the production of metonymic phenomena. If you listen to his music, you will find radical insight, auditory hallucinations, which are induced into all the listeners, which makes Lost really a remarkable show that has the metonymic faculties of expansion and penetrability. Know what I'm sayin'? Laughter Michael Giacchino: We have not yet been able to figure out if has a high IQ or low IQ. Laughter We're still working on that. We have teams of scientists figuring that out. Karl Vincent: Well, you know, the proof is in the pudding. Michael Giacchino: Great bass player right here. All these guys are fantastic. the string section Michael Giacchino: What do you normally play on film scores? Cello player: Like this... a slow, brooding passage Michael Giacchino: And that must be exciting for three hours. Cello player: Painful. I have to try and move around. Michael Giacchino: And what's it like when you come in here for Lost? player plays a staccato, dissonant passage Michael Giacchino: Can you explain what 'sul ponticello' is? Cello player: It means in Italian, "near the bridge". And that's what I'm doin' here. a scraping, tremolo passage near the bridge of the cello Michael Giacchino: Hear that cool, like... it's a cool scary kind of a sound. Isn't that neat? Cello player: And then you can go right off to the other side. on the other side of the bridge of the scoring session – [[Tim Simonec] conducting the opening musical cue to "Exposé"] Michael Giacchino: When we work, um, the scene gets projected up here. And we also have it in the booth. I'll generally stay in the booth since we have a very short period of time to do these things. My friend Tim will conduct for me, and I'll sit in the booth with Dan Wallin, the engineer, and I'll listen back to the playback. And the players, it's funny, because some of the players watch the show. And you can see them as they're playing, they're kind of like playing and looking up, sneaking peeks at the screen and wondering what's going on. So they're always getting hints of what's to come, you know, but it's hard to make sense because we usually go out of order when we're recording. So you're seeing different random scenes, and then there's no... you can't hear the dialog. So. And we have three hours to get it all done. We have to get it done in three hours or, you know, I get fired. So it's... Laughs the percussion room Michael Giacchino: This is the percussion room. I don't know if you can come in here and see this... a steel drum-like instrument ...but Emil Richards, who owns all of this stuff... he built this thing, he builds all these crazy things. the percussion room, with Emil Richards Michael Giacchino: What's the highlight of your career? Emil Richards: I would say Doctor Zhivago was one of the highlights. Michael Giacchino: Oh come on. How cool is that? Emil Richards: Yeah and, uh, Star Trek, the first Star Trek. Michael Giacchino: And you're gonna be doing the next Star Trek... Emil Richards: No, I'm not on that one, but... Michael Giacchino: No, no, no. Yes you are, because I'm doin' it. Emil Richards: Oh, oh, wonderful. Michael Giacchino: So you are on it. Emil Richards: Come on and play a couple things with me. Michael Giacchino: Alright, let's go. in the percussion room Michael Giacchino: This is called a Flapamba, and no, I never knew what a Flapamba was before Lost either. Richards plays the Flapamba, a marimba-like instrument Michael Giacchino: Isn't that cool? It's a great, like, eerie sound, you know. Giacchino picks up a piece of metal Michael Giacchino: This is a piece... an actual piece of the crashed airplane. Richards plays the piece of airplane metal to sit-down interview Michael Giacchino: Growing up, I made movies. I made Super 8 movies, and back to 'regular 8' movies, before they were Super 8. I was making 'regular 8' movies, stop motion films, and me my friends in the neighborhood would get together and make these crazy films. And so for me, this is where I was headed since I was 10 years old, you know. Not knowing, of course, how the heck I would ever get there, but I certainly hoped that I would get there at some point. And just... you know, it's been a crazy path, but yeah, to be here is great. And I still feel like I'm 10 years old. I feel like I've never left the back yard. [Back to Kris White, in one of the Lost offices] Kris White: Thanks for joining us. That's it for this edition of the Lost Video Podcast. Join us again in a couple of weeks, when we go back behind the scenes for a mixing session with executive producer Bryan Burk. Until then, you can always check out our audio podcasts at abc.com. And of course, new episodes of Lost airing on Wednesday nights from 10 - 11PM on ABC. to the scoring stage, with the trombone section Michael Giacchino: What, do you just count in? Trombone player: Yeah. Four beats. Michael Giacchino: Four? Four in. One, two, three... play the well-known "trombone slide" cue Michael Giacchino: ABC made us hire them. Believe me, I would get rid of them if I could. Laughter [ABC Lost promo card] Category:Official Podcasts